Purim 5775–A royal dress?

Purim is our festival of contradictions and hidden meanings. This year I suddenly noticed one detail that has been hiding in plain sight—the color of Esther’s royal dress. Was it blue, or gold? The Megillah itself is maddeningly ambiguous. We read in Chapter 5, “On the third day, Esther was garbed in royalty.” The ancient rabbis noticed something strange about the verse. It should have said that she was dressed in “royal garments” (בגדי מלכות מיבעי ליה), but instead says that she wore “royalty” (וַתִּלְבַּשׁ אֶסְתֵּר מַלְכוּת). What does that mean? What does that look like? In
Esther Rabba 9:1 we are told that she was accompanied by two maidens, resting her arm on one of them, while the other walked behind and held up her golden train. This would imply that her dress was gold.

But read ahead in the Megillah to chapter 8, verse 15. There we are told that Mordecai wore “royal garments of blue” (בִּלְבוּשׁ מַלְכוּת תְּכֵלֶת), with white trim and a great golden crown. This implies that to wear royal garments in the Megillah is to wear blue. So what color was Esther’s dress—blue, or gold?

There is something strange going on here, something hard to pin down. In fact, the Talmud acknowledges this at B. Megillah 15a, where Rabbi Elazar, citing Rabbi Hanina, concludes that Esther “wore,” not a simple garment, but the holy spirit. Later midrash adds that King Ahaseurus couldn’t figure out what he was looking at—he tried to look away, but angels compelled him to look at Esther, and seeing her cloaked in the holy spirit itself, he could not resist her plea. Who has ever seen a garment like that?

Only this week a clue to the mystery emerged at a wedding on the Scottish island of Colonsay, where the mother of the bride wore a dress that has confounded millions. Some see it as gold and white, others as blue and black, and some, like me, have seen it both ways. Has this dress replicated the mystery of Esther’s royal garment? It was blue, it was gold, and ultimately, it transcended normal senses. Nonsense? Or, the holy spirit? You decide–Purim sameah!